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Hospitals Challenge Big Pharma by Forming Their Own Drug Companies

Hospital leaders are tired of pleading in vain for drug companies to stop gouging the prices of critical medication. So a number of them have finally come up with a plan to go around the pharmaceutical industry entirely by manufacturing their own drugs.

“We are not going to lay down. We are going to go ahead and try and fix it,” Marc Harrison, the CEO of Intermountain Healthcare, a nonprofit Salt Lake City hospital group, told the New York Times.

Intermountain is partnering with three Catholic nonprofit hospital groups – Ascension, Trinity Health and SSM Health – to form a new non-profit organization that will manufacture and distribute drugs to hospitals, ideally for much cheaper than for-profit pharmaceutical companies.

The Times reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs has indicated an interest in taking part.